About Me and Life Force

I’m Larry and I’m a Scientologist.

That means I am a student of L. Ron Hubbard (LRH), and I sometimes refer to him as my teacher.

However, when I started this blog, I was a student of Bill Newman at Seattle Central Community College. He was trying to teach a bunch of us how to use PHP and mySQL to create a dynamic web application. He asked us to communicate with him through a blog, so I had to throw one together.

Thus, this site started out as a site about technical details. I tried to maintain that basic theme when I began to write about other topics. I established another blog (with blogger AKA blogspot – just for variety) for more integrative and esoteric posts.

LRH introduced me to the term “life force.” He mentions it in connection with writer and philosopher Henri Bergson, who used the term élan vital, which is sometimes translated as “life force,” although élan can also be translated as “impulse.” There is no doubt that LRH was influenced by Bergson in his earlier choices of terms and concepts.

I liked the term because it seemed to contain a kind of inherent contradiction, while also reminding one of the “Force” of Star Wars fame, and of other meanings of “force” such as in Air Force.

I was thinking that, if I ever got the chance to create my own company or business or performing group, I would call it Life Force. It meant to me both a force working for Life and the forces exerted by Life.

Scientology as a Resource

My initial purpose was to present the most basic concepts of Scientology in the context of what else has been going on across the internet (and we assume in life), whenever possible referring to LRH books that extend those basic concepts.

However, it became clear as I became more involved on the internet that there was a concerted effort to equate Scientology with our Church, and then to highlight attacks on the church (not the subject) using ex-members to make them seem plausible.

This meant that about the only accurate data you could find about Scientology – especially the subject itself – was by going to Church-created websites. It also meant that any unmoderated attempt to discuss the subject online would quickly become poisoned by lies and invective.

This leaves obscured the simple fact that Scientology is a resource for the public in general and was designed to be such a resource. The Church sites try to make this clear, and I can only add my voice to that message.

In these days of high cynicism, all websites are seen as slick covers for marketing campaigns that have some hidden deeper purpose. But use the Scientology sites as resources and you may be pleasantly surprised that they actually are.